Cloning in Coco Experiment

I was recently gifted a dozen clones that had about 3 weeks of growth on them. since i had zero interest in them, i decided to butcher them and run a cloning experiment. this will be my first time cloning in coco. i do not like growing with coco, and prefer peat myself, but coco is cheaper compared to rockwool and other substrates commonly used for cloning, is a natural bi-product that is formed in under a year, and many growers have had great success cloning in it.


THE EQUIPMENT
1 bag of Black Gold's "Just Coir", 2 cubic ft - $12
400 Dixie cups (cut holes in bottom for drainage)- $3
- With this $15 i can make 400 clones, so at least the price for cloning in coco is right. -

Rooting Agents:
Clonex - 0.3% IBA, Thiamine in a gel base
Dip-N-Grow - 1.0% IBA, 0.5% NAA, Thiamine in an alcohol base

Substrate Soaks:
Olivia's Cloning Solution (label application rates)
Dyna Gro's K-L-N (label application rates)
Homemade Bacteria Brew:
-In 1 gallon of reverse osmosis water-
a drizzle of Horticultural Molasses
.4g Technafloras Soluble Seaweed Extract,
3ml SaferGros Humax
1.1ml House & Gardens Roots Excelurator
1/3 tsp General Hydroponics Subculture B

Foliar Spray:
- In 1 liter of water -
.15g Technafloras Soluble Seaweed Extract (1-1-16)
.9ml 8% Fulvic Acid
.6ml Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro (9-3-6)
.5ml Polysorbate 20

3 gallons reverse osmosis water
pH Down (phosphoric acid)


TREATING THE COCO
Since i have found most companies coco treatment to have inadequate results, I decided to further treat the coco used for the test. i flushed the coco very thoroughly w/ tap water (EC of .4, pH ~7.5) to remove excess Na, Cl, and K and to supplement small amounts of Ca and Mg while also sterilizing the medium with chlorine/monochloramine. While the coco was being washed, i sifted the coco and water through a 300 micron screen to remove the finest particles to increase air capacity and prevent water logging, since the coco will be unamended. I then heated the coco to ~175-200 degrees multiple times to completely sterilize the medium of all fungi, bacteria and insects [eggs], to remove all chlorine/monochloramines, and to remove excess moisture without making the substrate hydrophobic. The resulting product i would consider a significantly more adequate cloning substrate than coco straight from the bag.


THE EXPERIMENT
I am testing 2 different types of cloning solutions, Clonex Rooting Gel and Dip-N-Grow Rooting Concentrate (at 10X dilution for 'semi-hardwoods'). Both of these are each considered the 'industry standard' for their individual type of cloning solution that has been made available for hobby growers.

Along with testing 2 different cloning solutions i am testing 4 different 'soaks' for the cloning substrate (coco). These 'soaks' are Dyna Gro's K-L-N, Olivia's Cloning Solution, my homemade bacteria brew, and tap water.
By pure bad luck, or maybe something to do with the holidays, the grocery store that i buy deionized & distilled water from was out of both, so Reverse Osmosis water was used instead for mixing the K-L-N, Olivia's and Bacteria Brew, as well as for diluting the Dip-N-Gro. The K-L-N, Olivia's and tap water final solutions were all adjusted to a pH of ~5.6-5.7, while the bacteria brew's pH was left adjusted, resulting in a pH of ~6.4. All 4 preparations we're equally aerated except for the Bacteria Brew, which had additional aeration to provide extra oxygen for the microbes.

To reiterate, here are the 8 test groups:
[Cloning Solution, Substrate Soak]

Clonex Rooting Gel, Dyna-Gro's K-L-N
Clonex Rooting Gel, Olivia's Cloning Solution
Clonex Rooting Gel, Homemade Bacteria Brew
Clonex Rooting Gel, Tap Water
Dip-N Gro (10x dilution), Dyna-Gro's K-L-N
Dip-N Gro (10x dilution), Olivia's Cloning Solution
Dip-N Gro (10x dilution), Homemade Bacteria Brew
Dip-N Gro (10x dilution), Tap Water

Each test group has 9 clones provided. All cuttings were taken, prepared, and transplanted yesterday. The cuttings were put in propagation trays & humidity domes and placed on top of heat mats, underneath T8's. They were sprayed with a (described above) foliar spray solution immediately after transplanting and again 24 hours later.

Feel free to ask any questions that come to mind and stay tuned for results.

Sub'd

Nice experiment

Great thread - exceedingly interesting. Of late, I have been trying to clone directly in coco. It has not been a rousing success - compared to my previous outstanding results with Rapid Rooters. I put that down more to my own stumblebum approach rather than to the media, however. I am hopeful that I can kick my direct-to-coco game up a few notches so will be reading of your experiments with great interest.

Good luck with the experiment! I love cloning in coco and always seem to have good results. Looking forward to your results.

Grow Safe

SDC

Coco works great for me. I just rinse well, pre charge with very weak nutes and stab a clone in there. I toss em in a rubbermaid tub with a clear lid and neglect them for a couple weeks till they're good to go. I look forward to seeing the results of your more scientific approach.

1and1 said:

Coco works great for me. I just rinse well, pre charge with very weak nutes and stab a clone in there. I toss em in a rubbermaid tub with a clear lid and neglect them for a couple weeks till they're good to go. I look forward to seeing the results of your more scientific approach.

Click to expand...

Thats what works for me also ( for years) with a 90+ % success rate. I think one of the keys is to take cuttings with a stem at least 4" - 6" long.

(Not to hijack a very interesting thread - but while we're waiting for results...) When you describe pre-charging with weak nutes...what kind of proportions are you using? Also, do you use cal/mag or the like? Thanks.

Hi Dizzlekush,

Here are some things I noticed about your experiment:
1) No control, i.e. no cloning solution, no substrate soak. Sounds trivial but it is actually crucial to have controls.
2) There are 8 test groups of 9 cuttings each for a total of 72 cuttings. All the cuttings from one mom? From multiple moms of one strain? From multiple moms of multiple strains?
3) If answer to #2 is something other than 'from one mom', how are you tracking the different strains/moms among the cuttings?

@NotaProfessor

to answer your first question about controls, i find it a bit unrealistic/pointless to try to clone cannabis with a high success % without some sort of cloning product (Gel, alcohols, powders, slurry's etc.) and without also having the substrate that the cuttings will be placed in wettened. so IMO a true control in the sense would be pointless. Cannabis cuttings dont root particularly well and coco isnt a miracle substrate, it would be throwing a whole potential test group in the trash for, what would be in this case, a wasteful rule of experimentation. I do agree that controls are important in many forms of experimentation though. however a cloning product w/ no hormones, such as Olivias gel, i could see being a 'control' (in a sense) worth testing. for a control for the substrate soak i used pH'ed tap water, as i considered it to be used in reality much more than other possible controls (Reverse osmosis, distilled, deionized) and that ultra purified water might leech nutrients out of the cutting through natural osmosis, but perhaps a root system is required for this action to happen. i possibly should not have pH'ed it if i wanted a more traditional control, but that would be changing a variable in the control group, which i didnt see fit.

I already half answered your 2nd question in the beginning of my post. the cuttings were taken from a dozen different clones that had about 3 weeks of growth on them. all of those dozen clones were of the same cultivar, cut from the same 'Afgoo' mom, and looked like they were, like clones...

hope this answers your questions and please ask any more that might come to mind or other additional comments.

Controls are very important*. Once you got your data, to what are you comparing their performance? Each other? Right there you have an issue which controls solve.

"Since i have found most companies coco treatment to have inadequate results, I decided to further treat the coco used for the test. "
This is another reason for a control. What if the treatment you did on the coco made it less likely to aid in cloning? You would not be able to see this if you did not do a control. (i.e. All the groups do poorly.) In reality, you'd need to do some controls of untreated coco.

Having a control of (no cloning gel/no coco treatment) is useful since there are multiple threads that speak of plain water cloning. Cuttings stuck in wet(tapwater or DI water is fine) coco are needed.

Regarding my Q's #2 and #3, thanks for pointing out where I missed the mention of where the cuttings came from.

*I'll point you to the 1974 Caltech commencement address by Richard Feynman. Here's an excerpt:

Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this--it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.

I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know the the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

Click to expand...

The whole address is worth a read, if you haven't read it already

I still greatly disagree with your opinion on a need to have a true control group in this particular experiment. The reason behind this experiment is to find the best rooting products for cloning Cannabis sativa. "to what are you comparing their performance? Each other?" yes exactly, i am comparing the efficiency of an alcohol based 1.0% IBA, 0.5% NAA & B1 solution against a gel based 0.3% IBA & B1 solution while simultaneously testing a hormone & nutrient soak against a plain nutrient soak, against a microbial soak, against the most commonly used 'control'. no further control is needed to quantify the efficiency of these products in relation to each other .i do not see "the problem" that arises in this situation that you speak of. if you honestly think the addition of your version of a control group would help in this search, then thats a point you and i will have to disagree on.

Controls are only useful to a point. in many legitimate studies, the decided "control group" has been utterly useless. ive seen coconut pith substrate experiments where the "control" was 50% peat and 50% vermiculite. who grows in a substrate like that in their right mind? nobody, but hey, there's you're "control" to satisfy a sometimes unnecessary requirement of experimentation. the reults of that experiment? coco is better than peat! (and burnt rice hulls [30%] are a better amendment than perlite). how did they get that conclusion, retarded use of a "control group". i've seen studies pertaining to ion uptake where the control groups are given 0 nutrition and is dead within a week, while the rest of the experiment rages on. sometimes the control is a waste of a test group, and since i am funding this experiment myself, i saw no need to let an entire test group die to please experiment rule sticklers that need their control (pun intended). if i was using a different test plant that's cuttings root easily (succulents per se) then maybe your idea of a control group might be worth in, but when cloning Cannabis sativa, you're just wasting a test group. by all means if you find my lack of a traditional "control" makes my experiment sub-par...then please... do your own.

your quote about Richard Feyman has nothing to do with controls. it has to do with the necessary replication of an initial test if your intentions are to compare the results of your test to the results of anothers initial test, which i agree with. i like that you brought up Feyman though, "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feyman!" is one of my favorite books.

NotaProfessor said:

"Since i have found most companies coco treatment to have inadequate results, I decided to further treat the coco used for the test. "
This is another reason for a control. What if the treatment you did on the coco made it less likely to aid in cloning? You would not be able to see this if you did not do a control. (i.e. All the groups do poorly.) In reality, you'd need to do some controls of untreated coco.

Click to expand...

The reason why i treated the medium was that after running tap water through the coco, i tested the runoff, where my EC meter maxed out at 4.0 EC. if you think removing salinity and increasing the air capacity of the medium could have a detrimental effect on the cloning, again i cant help you. not saying that all coco is this bad but that particular bag of "black golds just coir" is. o and by the way, how do you think they treat coco before they sell it, after the pith has been soaking in ocean water for a week? i just insured that the treatment was thorough and the grade of coco was a higher quality. but i would consider using coco that i did not treat myself a more useful control than the previous one you suggested, but again, at that salinity would kill the entire group, i might have done it if i bought a more quality brand of coco without such high EC and such fine coco particulate.

you and i have both expressed our individual opinions on the necessity of a control group in this experiment. lets not beat a dead horse, and drop that partuclar subject.

[...]since i am funding this experiment myself, i saw no need to let an entire test group die to please experiment zealots that need their control [...]

Click to expand...

-emphasis added

There's no reason to sink to this sort of exchange.
I gave you the feedback you sought. I will now leave you alone. I wish you well with your experiment and look forward to the results.

NotaProfessor said:

-emphasis added

There's no reason to sink to this sort of exchange.
I gave you the feedback you sought. I will now leave you alone. I wish you well with your experiment and look forward to the results.

Click to expand...

poorly phrased on my part due to lack of vocabulary. did not mean any negative connotations. meant more of a "stickler for the rules" instead of zealot. please accept my apologies, sincerely. the pun about control is fun-hearted and i am not speaking of you. i hope our confrontation does not stop you from posting in this thread, as your posts have been interesting and more thought provoking than most.

p.s. i see nothing wrong with being a stickler for the rules, and mean no insult by it.

Im pulling up a chair. Iv been using the dip-n-grow stuff ( works good), but i just bought Clonex to use with the aero cloner i made, I was thinking the gel might stick or stay on the clone better. I was using the dip-n-grow and rapid rooters with %100. Cool experiment!
Peace

thanks all for your interest and comments. i just got word that im likely to recieve 120 more cuttings from the same people that provided the original clones. they have 120 clones to top and nothing to do with the tops, having a surplus of clones themselves. so im to go to their grow while they top and make clones out of all the cuttings. so ive got some more coco to treat and a few gallons of distilled water to buy. i might make this a separate side by side experiment, where i test (3-6) different dilutions of Dip-N-Gro against Clonex and a distilled water control. (i got enough to sacrafice @NotaProfessor!)

The clones will either be all 'Afgoo', all 'Bubblegum' (TH Seeds) or a combo of the 2. not sure yet.

it might not be directly related to ur thread, but it might give u some more variables in ur experiment.

nowadays i allways clone directly in coco. i dont use hormones, nor do i mist the cuts withg water or anything like that. the only thing i do is i put a transparent plastic cup over the cut to keep it from getting direct airflow on it from the fans. sometimes i make holes in the cup, but often i dont.

when i clone in coco i find the best part is the fact its not necesary to do anything. i even often use recycled coco from flowered plants. i dont use hormones or any rooting aid.

cloning needs to get de-mystified. the truth is weed clones it self, as far as its not stressed. in low-light conditions and with controlled humidity the rooting process is the fastest. it takes about 2-3 weeks for them to start vegging. i use 1 liter pots, since they give a lot of space for the first roots to grow, without hitting a too wet spot in the bottom.

success rates are higher with this method than what i ever had before. i also ONLY use top shoots with vigorous growth for clones, this is part of why they root so fast.

peace all.

DK I clone in canna coco(no rinsing) but I add big and small perlite,clear cups mats and domes, also clonex.
coco mix is fully soaked with full strength bloom nutes, media is pressed hard around the stems. full success and roots in a weeek to a week and a half.
best part is no additional watering is needed.
the perlite improves the whole process alot
bigger clones with lotsa leaves grow faster too

Cloning Experiment B

Cloning Experiment B

So the day before yesterday i went to a fellow growers garden and while they were topping their plants, i was preparing the freshly cut tops to be clones. unfortunately many of the cuttings under one light ended up being too small to make clones out of. this was the last group i tried to make into clones and did not realize i was going to be short cuttings to complete my test groups. so the test groups are incomplete compared to what i was preparing.


THE EQUIPMENT

3 Gallons distilled water
Treated Coco
90 Dixie Cups
Dip-N-Grow
Dyna-Gro K-L-N
Propagation Trays
Humidity Domes
Heating Mat
Buckets
pH meter/adjusters


THE EXPERIMENT
Im testing the effectiveness of 5 different dilutions of Dip-N-Gro compared to a K-L-N/water soak and a distilled water soak. i will also be testing 2 different substrate soaks, K-L-N and distilled water. The different dilutions of Dip-n-Grow were as follows: 5X dilution, 7.5X dilution, 10X dilution, 12.5X dilution, and 15X dilution, as well as both a K-L-N and distilled water soak.

Treatment for Test Groups of Cuttings:
[Cutting Treatment, Substrate Soak]

5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, K-L-N Soak
5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak
7.5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, K-L-N Soak
10X dilution Dip-N-Grow, K-L-N Soak
12.5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, K-L-N Soak
12.5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak
15X dilution Dip-N-Grow, K-L-N Soak
Distilled Water Soak, Distilled Water Soak
K-L-N Soak, K-L-N Soak

Missing Groups
7.5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak
10X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak
15X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak

There are 10 cuttings in each test group except the '12.5X dilution Dip-N-Grow, Distilled Water Soak' which has 9. All coco was treated the same way as the previous experiment. no foliar spraying will be done this experiment as the clones have rather large leaves with very healthy pigment and i doubt it will be necessary.

As always feel free to comment or ask questions.

Preview of Next Cloning Experiment
I will be testing the effects of foliar applications of 24-epibrassinolide ~7 days after cuttings are treated in a separate experiment.
Might possibly test foliar applications of NAA as well but not likely.

Stay Tuned, Stay Safe,
-dizzle